Emma, Christianity, and Adultery
In Madame Bovary, Emma is depicted as a slave to her desires, namely, to the desire for what she calls love. The origin of these desires appears to stem from her childhood habit of reading romantic novels while she lived in the convent. Because of her idealized picture of what romantic love is supposed to be, she searched desperately for this in real life, but to no avail. It appears that Emma’s suffering is due to her disillusion with reality and her own naivete about the nature of relationships with other people. However, time after time, Emma looks into the face of morality in the respect of her religion. After she does so, rather than reconcile with her faith and repent her adulterous sins, Emma proceeds to commit them again, with a new and refreshed energy. In one of my previous papers I analyzed the role Christianity assigned to love and concluded that Christianity causes people to be enslaved by their Love for God. Although Emma never experienced the same type of Love for God that I discussed, her Christian upbringings played a significant role in shaping the way she looked upon life. Specifically, Christianity contributed a great deal to Emma Bovary’s choice to commit adultery in her search for Love.
The teachings of Christianity encourage the very thing Emma did throughout her entire lifetime—expect better things to come. Worldly things are not to be coveted because grander rewards will come in Heaven. Christians are taught to dream of a better future, eternal life, peace, and happiness. Moreover, Christianity makes its followers live in expectation of something better, and actions are motivated by expectations of these eternal rewards. Christians also martyr those who sacrifice and suffer since the sacrifice of Christ is a symbol of God’s Love. By acting in the imitation of Christ, the rewards and expectations will thus be fulfilled in Heaven. Therefore, in Christianity, Love is used to achieve transcendence. It is a passion that consumes, controls, and allows one to be content with unhappiness and suffering.
Emma wanted happiness and an end to suffering just like other Christians, and she knew that the solution lie in Love. In the convent, she was inspired by stories from the old maid who slipped her romance novels. In the holy atmosphere of the convent, these stories of “love, lovers, swee...
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...ll is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains could be of use to some one, we should find consolation in the thought of sacrifice” (168). Because she felt this alienation from God, she struggled to practice Christianity. She knew what she desired, but she did not know how to attain it. Emma did not know how to be a virtuous woman and happy woman at the same time. The break between worldly love and heavenly love lead her astray and towards adultery, and the lack of guidance from the Church caused her to become confused.
Finding worldly love has become more and more important today, and many people will travel the same roads as Emma in pursuit of the celestial lover, trying to make their sufferings and sacrifices of use to some one. Like Emma, they are motivated by the ideas that they deserve better and that happiness is found in Love. These ideals caused Emma to commit adultery and tragically end her life; she represents the modern person trapped between the ideals of the Christian tradition and modern times. Because of this conflict of interest, the modern man, as demonstrated by Emma Bovary, will suffer from insatiable and conflicting desires.
Hemingway provides the reader with insight into this story, before it is even read, through the title. The girl in the story mentions the hills that can be seen from the train station and describes them as looking like white elephants. Jig is at a crossroads in her life, accompanied by her partner. She is pregnant and cannot decide whether to choose life for the baby, or to get an abortion. Throughout the story, she experiences persistent uncertainty over what she wants to do with her life. Whatever decision she makes will have a drastic impact in her later years as a woman. While seated at the bar inside the train station, the girl says, “The hills look like white elephants” (Hemingway). The hills that are spotted in the distance directly parallel the decision that Jig must make. Critic Kenneth Johnston was recorded stating, “A white elephant is a rare pale-gray variety of an Asian elephant held sacred by the Burmese and Siamese. The girl’s reverence for life is captured by this meaning of the phrase.” Johnston also says, “A white ...
From the beginning we can infer that she is a religious woman, as she insults her father by calling him a “prevaricate” and by stating he “will not be able to prevaricate at the gates of Heaven.” She is disappointed at how her father is lying to the authorities as he is hiding the truth from them. Since Emma is a deeply committed Christian she cannot bear to see her own father going against God’s law, therefore she takes it upon herself to deliver the message of God to Fusi. She and John, her husband, own a Volkswagen with all kinds of religious paraphernalia and films. Although they do not attempt to preach to the townspeople as they are Lutheran, they make an effort to convert those “along the grey dirt roads that led past tumble-down farmhouses, the inhabitants of which were never likely to enter a bank.” Emma is usually passive-aggressive towards Fusi, but after Fusi returns from a particularly difficult fishing trip, she becomes angry with Fusi. She wants Fusi to stop fishing because she cares about him, and she implores him to enter the care home as a resident. Although Fusi is in no condition to fish, he can still remain independent at home. But even knowing this Emma continues to try to get Fusi to leave since Emma knows that if Fusi stays in this home he will continue to fish illegally. Emma wants Fusi to admit the truth since she believes that God will punish him if he does not “repent” by admitting his lies. When Fusi finally gives on up trying to stay in his home and runs to the care home, Emma simply says “The Lord’s work to be done.” This shows that Emma views her actions as carrying out the work of God, which justifies it completely for herself. Rosie, a woman who was talking to Fusi when he ran off, tells Emma “You had no right”, showing that the other people around Emma disapprove of her actions. But this does not matter to Emma since she views her actions as being divinely guided. She perceives
Kempe’s story has a typical beginning. She is married, soon thereafter conceives her first child, and goes on to give birth to fourteen more children. She assumes the responsibilities of a wife and mother whose position in the late medieval society is assured by the solid reputation of her father, John Burnham, and her husband, John Kempe. However, Kempe’s conventional story changes early in her life by an elusive interaction with Jesus that she experiences shortly after her first excruciating child birth. Women were expected to carry out the societal norm of a good wife and mother which meant staying home to tend to the family. As we’ve seen, this is the opposite of how Kempe wanted to live her life — she hastily became distinguished and recognized. Her autobiography explains her own efforts to dissociate herself from the covetous and restric...
“Half-hanged mary” by Margaret Atwood is a poem about a woman named Mary whose circumstances causes her to redefine not only herself, but her beliefs. For several hours, Mary struggles to hang on to her life and her will, as she grapples with her faith in God. Atwood’s use of imagery, sound devices, diction and form, transform the poem into an extended metaphor that highlights the standards of religion which correspond closely to the downfall of society during that time period.
Baron Richard Von Krafft-Ebing, a 19th century German psychiatrist, was quoted as having said, "We find that the sexual instinct, when disappointed and unappeased, frequently seeks and finds a substitute in religion." This may have been the condition of Margery Kempe when she desired to cease all sexual activity with her spouse because of her devotion to God. Instead of performing her duties as a wife, she chose instead to spread her knowledge of God to her community and did so not only in speech, but also in literature. Whatever her motivation for creating such descriptive language, it is evident that her faith in God conquered both her fear of public opinion and the constraints placed upon all women during the period. Living in the 1400s, she steps out of a woman's role and into the territory of a man by living her life publicly, abandoning her position of mother and wife, and recording her life in writing. Fortunately, because she was writing for religious reasons, her work was both permitted and accepted. In The Book of Margery Kempe, she describes her experiences with brilliant imagery, some of which is sexual, all of which is sensual. By using her own senses to portray her spiritual...
In the Victorian society, love, sex and desire were the unspeakable subjects, especially for a young, unmarried woman in care of two young children. The governess herself can not imagine thinking about or mentioning her sexual needs. Her desire for love is so strong that she immediately falls in love with the man she hardly...
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The problem we find in this story, and in puritanism, is that it presents contrasting views of love. Attachment to earthly possessions, to other people in fact, is discouraged, because everything physical leads to temptation and damnation, and ultimately hell, while the road to salvation of the individual wanders through a spiritual discipline, rigour, austerity. A man should not love his wife more than he loves God; in fact, it is recommended that he not derive pleasure from his wife, but rather seek suffering, in order to redeem himself from his earthly condition, his impure state.
Emma's arrogance shines through when she brags that she is exceptionally skillful at matching couples. She believes that she is in control of fate and must play matchmaker in order for couples to discover their true love. Austen confirms, "The real evils indeed of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself" (Austen 1). Although Emma is so spoiled and overbearing, she truly doesn't realize this fact.
Love can sometimes be seen as a counterintuitive and unconventional sense of life. The irony in it all is love could either be as warm as the Sunday morning sun or as cold as a New England winter when touched by the heart or the skin. As we grow up, if we believe we are cherished by the most respectful and admirable person, we give up the most vulnerable parts of ourselves: the body. However, throughout modern society, people tend to use sexual intercourse as a form of personal pleasure and gain without the obligations of emotions. Henceforth, stated in Sharon Olds’ “Sex Without Love”, premarital sex may be against God’s intentions to be pure but at the same time people love the priest more the teachings and are willing to go against the Lord
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader is treated to an enthralling story of a woman’s lifelong quest for happiness and love. Although this novel may be analyzed according to several critical lenses, I believe the perspectives afforded by French feminists Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray have been most useful in informing my interpretation of Hurston’s book. In “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Cixous discusses a phenomenon she calls antilove that I have found helpful in defining the social hierarchy of women and relationships between them in the novel. In addition, Cixous addresses the idea of woman as caregiver, which can be illustrated through the character of Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God. On the other hand, Luce Irigaray discusses the different modes of sexual desire of men and women in her essay, “The Sex Which is Not One.” Many examples supporting and refuting her claims can be found in the novel. According to Cixous, the most heinous crime committed by men against women is the promotion of antilove. “Insidiously, violently, they have led [women] to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs” (1455). Their Eyes Were Watching God offers many examples of women in vicious contention with one another, usually involving or benefiting a man. Janie is confronted by the malice of her female neighbors in the very first chapter of the novel, as she arrives back in Eatonville after her adventure with Tea Cake. “The women took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away for remembrance. It was a weapon against her strength and if i...
A central component of medieval religion that is evident in even the slightest dissection of the life of Margery Kempe or the directed discipline from the author advising contemplation is an unmistakable desire for religious experience. Even among married men and women who are occupied with family responsibilities, lay people during this time such as we see in the life of Margery herself are seeking more intense religious ways of living. Margery, as the example, lived with her husband with whom she had fourteen children. Growing up influenced by the church, her spirituality came to a heightened level when she and her Jesus began having actual communication with one another. While the church was catalyzing religious experience in medieval communities, upon the realization of direct mystical connection with Christ in the lives of people such as Margery, the desire for the inward search for spiritual satisfaction spread.
The relationship between Peter Abelard and Heloise failed to be established with strong bonds between the young couple, allowing lust to be the sole, capricious foundation of the relationship. Peter Abelard was a 12th century philosopher who after beginning to lecture on the Scriptures began to gain more notoriety throughout France and much of Europe. This newfound fame soon developed into conceit, Abelard thinking himself “the only philosopher in the world” (Historia Calamitatum 9). This attitude gave way to a lifestyle of flesh, prostitutes, and inability to focus on philosophy. Peter Abelard met Heloise, a young woman with great promise of being a student, while traveling through Paris (9). Rather than establishing a relationship based on a strong foundation, Abelard bases his interest on Heloise through more extraneous factors; Abelard bases ...
“The Hills Like White Elephants” is a short story that is about an American man and a girl called Jig. They are sitting at a table outside a train station, waiting for a train to Madrid. While they wait they order drinks and have a heated ongoing conversation over whether or not Jig will have an operation that would be of great significance to their relationship. “The Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway has two important symbols in the story, the hills and the drinks both of which help to give us a better understanding of what is going on between the American and his girl.
Madame Bovary, a novel by Gustave Flaubert, describes life in the provinces. While depicting the provincial manners, customs, codes and norms, the novel puts great emphasis on its protagonist, Emma Bovary who is a representative of a provincial woman. Concerning the fundamental typicality in Emma Bovary’s story, Flaubert points out: “My poor Bovary is no doubt suffering and weeping at this very moment in twenty French villages at once.” (Heath, 54). Yet, Emma Bovary’s story emerges as a result of her difference from the rest of the society she lives in. She is in conflict with her mediocre and tedious surroundings in respect of the responses she makes to the world she lives in. Among the three basic responses made by human beings, Emma’s response is “dreaming of an impossible absolute” while others around her “unquestionably accept things as they are” or “coldly and practically profiteer from whatever circumstances they meet.” (Fairlie, 33). However, Emma’s pursuit of ideals which leads to the imagining of passion, luxury and ecstasy prevents her from seeing the world in a realistic perspective or causes her to confuse reality and imagination with each other.